User Folders - Change Default Location

robmar0se said:

I moved the user folders as per the script, but then ran into problems on networking them. It would appear that relocating these folders does not necessarily take the permissions with them I may be wrong on this as we always use separate partitions for data, so unable to verify this. This situation arose irrespective of the type of network we implememted.

For each folder properties, on the sharing tab, click share. type e name, or click on the adjacent arrow to select the relevant group, guest, or "everyone", and click add. The entry should appear in the table below: you then need to click on the adjacent arrow to select the type of permission, read, reade/write, or remove. then click on share below.

Any better suggestions?

Good question. I have not considered moving the directories so that they would be shared.

The way you tried it might be intuitive from a Windows user perspective, but as a networking guy, I would have first tried relocating the folders off the user hard drive entirely and onto a file server...

So instead of moving the directories from c:\users\doodyhead\documents to a different drive or partition (such as to d:\users\doodyhead\documents); I would try have tried relocating them to something like \\NAS3\Volume_2\usr\doodyhead\documents

Then setting files themselves, and the file permissions become a subset of your actual network, and you can manage them remotely far easier. You can back up data via network backups, the shared documents would be available even when that person does not have their pc turned on,...

The way you tried it might be intuitive from a Windows user perspective, but as a networking guy, I would have first tried relocating the folders off the user hard drive entirely and onto a file server...

I totally agree with your suggestion as imminently sensible, however non-technical home users and small businesses, aren't always keen to invest in extra drives for backup, extra drives for networking etc. So sometimes we have to live/work within constraints. Secondly, users with laptops may need to hold data within their local drive for when they are out and about..

Windows 7 homegroups were supposed to be a doddle, however I am finding there are hidden issues, not sure at this stage whether the relocation of folders may contribute to these issues....

I'm trying to move the user accounts folders to another drive to save space on my SSD. However, i do not have a location tab when I right click on a user folder and select properties. Any idea what I might be doing wrong?

Brink said:

Hello Jsettoon,

Did you open the Start Menu, and type shell:UsersFilesFolder in the search line and press enter to view the user files from this location?

The main user folder itself will not have a "Locations" tab, but the individual user folders (My Music, My Videos, etc...) should.

Thanks, this works now. I was wanting to move the folders for each user (Scott, Guest, Admin) to another location. Is this possible? I'm trying to keep my data on a separate drive while still utilizing windows libraries and shortcuts to user files. Btw my SSD is only 60G.

Thanks Brink. I'll give that a try.

This method worked fine until I got to step 15 and tried to delete the user file from the C:\ drive. Windows would not delete the file because it said the file was in use by another program. Thanks again for the help, any suggestions?